Guest Columnists

Denver's Biennial of the Americas, great art but clever marketing too

Daniel Ovave positions a piece of wood Friday on the five-story artwork called "Mine Pavilion" by Pezo von Ellrichshausen for the Biennial of the Americas, which begins Tuesday. The project at Larimer Street and Speer Boulevard is made from beetle-kill wood and boulders. (Cyrus McCrimmon, The Denver Post)

What would it take to make Denver a truly interesting place? Or, perhaps more precisely, to make the world think our city is interesting?

We'd need to show off our best talents and spend a couple million dollars to generate buzz. We'd have to throw some bang-up parties, bring in big art, hold a few brainy seminars to prove we're engaged.

And we'd have to host a small parade of international celebrities, business titans, political leaders and other boldface names, so that people actually paid attention for a few minutes.

Put all that together — oh, and add a live opera for dogs — and you can envision Denver's Biennial of the Americas, which kicks off Tuesday. The five-day event is a showy, sprawling public relations effort on a level this city rarely sees.

Its goal: to put Denver on the map, to place it among the world's cultural, commercial and intellectual capitals.

If that sounds overly ambitious, considering places such as New York, London, Berlin and Tokyo already have a lock on those titles, then maybe you are thinking along the wrong lines. This biennial has a longitudinal strategy, looking to bump the city's clout in the Western Hemisphere, where competition isn't so stiff and potential friends are closer.

"We spend all of our time looking to the east and looking to the west," Gov. John Hickenlooper said, "when we should be looking north and south."

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The governor is an ardent supporter of the biennial; people speak of it as his personal project, even though it is run by an independent nonprofit. But his endorsement has made the event possible, luring the $3.5 million in private donations that will fund it and drawing in serious talent.

Go-to politicians will be there, such as Ken Salazar and U.S. Education Secretary Arne Duncan, but so will Colombian Ambassador Carlos Urrutia, and the CEOs of Suncor, Discovery Communications and Qualcomm.

For a generation of business executives nourished by trendy TED Talks and the high-level conferences held in Davos and Aspen, these are significant names and meant to lure crowds to the Buell Theatre, where they will gather at 5:30 each evening for public round tables.

Intended to bolster the credibility of the biennial will be a series of daily, nonpublic "Clinicas," where international participants will take on topics such as education reform, water and technology needs with a goal of "not only identifying but solving" issues, said Mike Fries, the Denver cable executive who chairs the biennial board.

"In that way, the biennial becomes a thought leader on topics that are important to the region," he said.

Art from across the Americas

The art has its share of renown, as well. Nick Cave, the toast of New York this spring with his Grand Central Station "Herd" performances, will do a show in Civic Center. Actor James Francocreated one of the 30 art billboards that will go up across the region. Authors, musicians, poets and curators from Canada to Argentina are in the mix.

It comes together into something equally flashy, though more credible than you might expect from a public art event in Denver. The large-scale pieces across downtown were assembled by Carson Chan, a young Canadian curator with a growing reputation, who works out of Berlin.

Architects and artists from across the Americas were invited to make works exploring Denver's urban infrastructure issues. Plan:b Arquitectos, of Medellin, Colombia, for example, took on the lack of downtown gathering places by creating "Skyline Cloud," a giant shade pavilion in Skyline Park.

Just as promising is the main public festival, dubbed Denver Night and set for Friday. Los Angeles musician and artist Chris Kallmyer has curated an evening-long "Concert With Music and Animals," which features the work of avant-garde musicians and filmmakers distilled in the ways of popular culture. The event will have "public appeal, but a lot of toothiness, too," Kallmyer said.

The offbeat stage lineup bears that out. At one point, it will feature five live versions of "You Are My Sunshine," by a barbershop quartet, a DJ and others; after that, Colorado Symphony musicians will play an electronic composition by Liliana Porter, transposed by Christopher Rountree,who will conduct.

The main event Friday is "Tragedy on the Sea Nymph," a short video about two love-crossed, shipwrecked dogs accompanied by live opera singers and orchestra players. Real dogs are invited to this, and the potential for canine chaos in Civic Center is part of the allure of the event.

There will also be art installations, including a 70-foot circular light piece by Jen Lewinburied into the lawn.

The art reaches high and low. It's meant to be interactive and internationally respectable but still reflect the profile of a city defined by "that combination of caring about serious art quality, but not seeming high-falutin'," said Adam Lerner, who runs the Museum of Contemporary Art Denver and consulted on the programing.

"That we really value art but we also value thinkers — that feels to me really Denver."

Scramble to redefine eventLerner has been instrumental in honing that balance as well as resurrecting the biennial from the stumble it took during its first edition in 2010. That premiere event was smaller, and drew hundreds (even dozens) of participants to events organizers hoped would lure thousands. That it has taken three years to bring back a happening, that by its name and nature should return every two, is enough evidence of how challenging round one was.

This time out, the biennial is better organized and funded, though it had its rough spots. In January, the organization let go of its original executive director, Abaseh Mirvali, after less than a year on the job. Erin Trapp, a staffer in Hickenlooper's previous mayoral administration, took control.

A scramble to redefine the event ensued. Mirvali, a career curator, had the focus on art and spoke of drawing international visitors. The attention has since shifted toward politics, and no one predicts a lot of out-of-towners will come. The goal is urban clout, not tourist dollars.

Hickenlooper notes that the biennial will also be business-friendly. For a Colorado company such as CH2M Hill — which consults on infrastructure problems across the globe — to sponsor a roundtable on water issues makes good sense.

The biennial, opening Tuesday with a chat on public health and closing Saturday with a series of artistically curated pop-up beer gardens, offers an excuse for businesses, community groups and artists to make international acquaintances that could grow into "more meaningful relationships, then friendships, then partnerships."

At worst, Denver gets a reputation for throwing one of the trendiest conferences this side of the Atlantic in 2013. "It's not a bad thing to be a place where you convene the best and the brightest," the governor points out.

And in his dreams, it positions the city as a hub of hemispheric activity.

"Rome wasn't built in a day, and neither was Mexico City or New York. What we're building is a foundation for change and innovation," he said. "If you don't do this, how do you build that foundation?"

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